Page 5 of Most Likely to Match
I can picture the bus stop advertisement now:I don’t need a boyfriend. These two people matched by accident. Please don’t fire me!
“You should meet the photographer they hired, by the way,” Nick says as I open the office door. Immediately, yelled conversation hits all three of us like Grond, the battering ram. “He grew up in the ’burbs, like you.”
Now it’s my turn to snort. The Greater Toronto Area is surrounded by twenty-five urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The implication that I may know the photographer because he and I both grew up in “the ’burbs” is like an American asking a Canadian if they know Joe from Canada.
“Sure thing, Nick,” I say, but his face is buried in Jasmine’s neck again and I’m not sure he heard me.
One of thethings people loved about Core Cupid, back when people loved Core Cupid, was that I captured the best of both worlds: a near perfect algorithmic matching tech and one-on-one, face-to-face customer service. I thrive one-on-one, getting to know a person, especially a client.
What I can’t handle is crowds.
There’s not much point in me coming to these networking events, even though I’ve helped plan them for the Downtown Toronto District BIA for the last year. I always end up finding a corner to hole myself up in and hope that if anyone does come up to talk to me, they’re someone I already know, since I’ve literally backed myself into a corner and can’t get away.
Luckily, Jasmine knows this about me, and she soon comes to find me where I’m perched on a stool at the end of the bar, close to the door and the high-set basement windows, with a glass of sparkling water sweating next to me, even though Moonbar offers two free drink tickets for all BIA members.
She’s a perfect buffer for therealbusinesspeople, who have no problem walking up to complete strangers and asking probing questions likeWho are you?AndWhat do you do?
Rocco and Bernie, the other co-owners of Moonbar, along with Nick, check in with us periodically, but the place is so packed that they can never stay for long.
That’s good, at least. My business might be failing, but the business community in our area thrives, despite the continued encroachment of condo developers and American multinational organic supermarket chains.
Jasmine waits until the CEO and founder of the health and fitness coworking space— a woman who is both stunningly beautiful and can definitely bench press not only the equivalent of my bodyweight in barbells and plates, but literally me as a person— before she turns to me and says, “What’s going on with you? You’ve had a…” She gestures to her forehead. “Since you walked in.”
I want to deny, deny, deny, because I am a businesswoman, and I don’t need help. Because Jasmine has always had her life together.She raised her sister and bought a bar and has an obnoxiously healthy relationship with Nick, considering they started out as a terrible case of mistaken identity. But mostly because I’m embarrassed. Not only that I can’t hang on to my clients, but because it makes me a failure.
I wish I could explain to every client who has questioned my capability as a matchmakerwhyI don’t have a significant other. How I watched the implosion of my parents’ marriage as a preteen and understand acutely how even well-matched people might not make it. How I hurt a person I very much liked, and how the guilt and the shame of that made me realize that marriage was the last union in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to enter into.
“Chloe?” Jasmine asks, true concern in her voice, and I realize— oh my good god— that I am about three seconds away from crying.
“I’m bleeding clients,” I say in a strangled voice.
“Hey,” comes a deep, masculine voice next to us. “Smile.”
Because of course the photographer has chosen this exact moment to take our photo. His camera obscures most of his face. All I can tell about him is that he is white and has dark hair and is a few inches taller than me. The word A P E R - T U R E is spelled out across his fingers, and shadows of ink wrap around his wrists and forearms before they disappear beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his button-up shirt. Their placement seems haphazard and irreverent, that style that can best be described asbitchy little masc tattoos.
Regardless of what “burb” he’s from, now is not the time to introduce myself; it’s bad enough my business is crumbling down around me. I can’t let this objectively hot man— a man I would normally have no trouble flirting with— know how very much I am losing it right now.
Jasmine and I lean into each other as we face the camera and smile, the kind of shared cultural behavior that comes from years of having photos taken by night club promo reps in our twenties. Despite witnessing the burst of his camera flash since I arrived, it still startles me when he takes our picture. I don’t know what kind of facehe’s captured, but there’s no way we’ll use that for BIA social media promotion.
I turn back to Jasmine before he can ask for another photo or, worse, introduce himself to me. The last thing I need to do right now is try to figure out the six degrees of separation I have with Nick’s new friend.
“I’ve lost three clients this month. One literally fired me while I was on my way here.”
“What? Why? Your algorithm is perfect.”
A generous assessment, considering no algorithm is perfect and my algorithm matched her with the wrong Nick.
“It has nothing to do with the algorithm.” I look over my shoulder, like the sharks of the Toronto matchmaking industry are hovering nearby, salivating for all my secrets. “They all say something similar in their exit survey. That they didn’t feel like they could take me seriously as a matchmaker because I don’t have my perfect match.”
Jasmine stares into the silence between us for a long moment, then says, way too loudly, “That’s fucking bullshit.”
The manager of the bao shop and a rooftop garden landscaper pause mid-conversation to stare at us.
“I know,” I whisper. “But…” I shrug. Because what else is there to say?
“Couldn’t you just use the algorithm on yourself?” she asks.
“No.” I can’t unpack the ethical implications of that right now, but regardless, I don’t actuallywantto be in a relationship, and I tell her so.
